


Worth It

by JosephineStone



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Past Child Abuse, post-epilogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 17:49:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9249071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JosephineStone/pseuds/JosephineStone
Summary: Harry and Draco run into each other years twenty some years after Harry broke Draco’s heart with a goodbye.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sassy_cissa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sassy_cissa/gifts).



> Thank you, mods, for being so patient with me, and T for reading through it for me.

Harry’s days as a divorced man were monotone: every moment the same as the last, every day the same as the one which came before it. It was Lily’s last year at Hogwarts, and although this left little impact on Harry’s daily existence it brought a sense of finality with it. 

All his children had grown up. 

They’d all moved on with their lives, and their mother went with them.

For his part, Harry no longer had any goals left to achieve—he’d had his family, gave his children a perfect childhood and home, and was the Head Auror—nothing was left for him to move on to. He’d always seen these things as destinations; the end. Now he was standing on the other side of them watching their retreating backs, leaving him lifeless and alone.

His habits changed to reflect this, and his friends worried over him. They didn’t seem to have the same problem he had; all still content with their lives. He and Ron had an unspoken arrangement: if Harry came out of his office near the time Ron left, then they went out to a pub together. Otherwise, Harry left late and went out on his own. 

It was a Ron-less night when Draco walked back into his life by way of the pub’s door.

The chatter was too loud around him to hear the door, but its movement had caught his attention. As Draco stepped further into the pub, the chatter faded to the background as Harry debated on if he should stay or go. Draco hadn’t noticed him. There was no reason they couldn’t be in the same pub, just as long a Draco didn’t cause a scene.

Only Draco’s mere presence normally caused a scene.

There was nothing for it but to accept fate or avoid it, but since there had been so little excitement in Harry’s life for such a long time, he stayed. 

All eyes followed Draco to the bar, so Harry’s were just part of the crowd. His stare could be as meaningless as theirs if he told himself it was. 

Harry had become good at that as a child—lying to himself. 

Abused children are the best at lying to themselves; it gets them through their days. A survival tactic that the unabused never learned and often can’t bring them to understand. Draco lied to himself. He was better at it than Harry could ever dream to be. It was what drew them together after the war. Draco would make some offhanded comment that caused everyone to glare while Harry tried not to laugh.

They found themselves alone; both hiding from everyone else in random abandoned rooms throughout the castle.

Draco talked; Harry listened. 

Draco laughed; Harry said, ‘that’s not funny,’ while holding back his own.

Draco smirked; Harry smiled.

You have to learn to laugh again after trauma. No matter what it was you have to learn how to laugh, and then you have to learn how to laugh at the trauma. Abused kids know this even when they don’t have the words to express it. It draws them together with their dark humour that no one other than themselves could ever understand. 

It tears them apart, too.

Over two decades later, sitting only one table away from where Draco stood at the bar, all these feelings came rushing back, and Harry can’t hold back a laugh. It’s short, gruff, and to himself—no one else in the pub noticed it—but Draco turned. 

Draco looked the way Harry felt: gray and blue. 

But, Draco was always gray and blue no matter what he wore.

For a breath, it felt as though Draco had moved toward him, but then his drink arrived, and he turned back to the bar. Harry couldn’t get himself to make that move. 

Maybe he was better off without any more drama in his life.

Stay put and stay safe was his new mantra.

#

Oh how much just a glance can change one’s life.

For the last year, Draco had been living. 

That’s all. Just living. Not _travelling around the world_ as his mother put it or _having a midlife crisis_ as his ex-wife put it. 

Living.

He was alive and unchained. It had taken far too long for him to give himself that gift. Life had got in the way of living. So after Scorpius left Hogwarts, Draco took a break from life and began living. 

Then a glance from Harry Potter reminded him that he still wasn’t.

Move on; walk away.

But the feeling followed him out of the pub that night and through the next few days. Christmas was coming, and he tried to keep his mind occupied by that. It proved impossible. Harry had always had that effect on him. He told himself he wasn’t hoping to see Harry again the next time he went to that pub. He told himself he wasn’t disappointed when Harry never showed. 

Draco had always been good at lying to himself.

It was at a mutual friend’s party when they ran into each other again.

‘I didn’t know that you were friends with Potter,’ Draco said not long after he’d arrived.

Pansy said, ‘I didn’t know that it was any of your business.’

‘What’s new with him?’

‘I don’t know, Draco; perhaps you should ask him. That is what most people tend to talk about at places like this, and he is standing right over there all by himself.’

‘I can’t just—you’re laughing at me.’

‘No,’ Pansy said, shaking her head. ‘I’m trying not to laugh at you. You two used to be close from what I hear from him. You should be able to ask him a simple conversation starter without my help. Has all that vacationing turned you dim?’ 

Draco watched Harry from across the room for a while before Pansy left him and Draco made his way over to him. Before Draco had a chance to say hello, Harry asked,

‘Do you ever wonder if it was worth it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Is your life—how it is at this moment—worth all the pain that came before it?’ 

Draco smiled at the memory. ‘Two decades and that’s what you open up with?’

‘I had to make sure it was real.’

‘You second guess that much?’ Draco did himself from time to time.

‘That after the war I became best mates with Draco Malfoy for a moment?’ Harry paused in thought. ‘A brief moment, and still it’s less believable than dragons and unicorns.’

‘So, you’re close with Pansy now?’ Draco asked, not wanting to go too far down memory lane with Harry. It lead to too many places that hurt.

‘We see each other at work from time to time,’ Harry said with a shrug. ‘Like you and Hermione before you left.’

‘So,’ Draco said, ‘is it, for you I mean. Your life—is it?’

‘It was—but, I don’t know. Right at this moment? You?’

‘When I walked through the door earlier, I would have said yes, but—then I saw you.’ And Draco didn’t say why because Harry already knew even if he’d pretend not to.

Harry laughed, but it was strained. ‘I still have that effect on you? It must be a talent then, because I assure you, I haven’t been practicing.’

They stood a minute in silence before Draco said, ‘I actually am close with Hermione.’

‘I know—’

‘Pansy will kill me later for this, but: do you want to go somewhere?’

‘What do you have in mind?’

‘Anywhere that isn’t a party—you decide.’

#

Harry chose Draco’s flat because he wanted to see how Draco lived now that he no longer stayed in one place for longer than a few months. It looked like any other flat. Harry supposed it wasn’t too much trouble to pack up a flat for one when the one had use of a wand.

They talked all night. Just like they’d done just after the war. Back when Harry had broken Draco’s heart with goodbye.

‘Why me?’ Harry had asked, and they fell from his mouth again then, ‘I’m nothing special. Why me?’

‘I don’t know. Does anyone know?’ Draco ran his hands through his hair. ‘Because you make me feel. Anger and fear. Happy and lust. You make me feel things. You make be feel everything from one side of the spectrum to the other. That’s all: you make me feel.’

Those words had always been true for Harry too.

They fell back into the conversation about what they’d missed in each other’s lives over the last twenty some years until the sun began to rise.

‘Hey, Draco, do you see that?’

‘Yeah, the sun is rising.’

‘It’s the best part of my day.’

And, because Draco recognised it from a line he’d said so many years before, he finished the sentence for him: ‘Watching the sun rise with you.’

When they finally kissed good morning, they both leaned into it—not one chasing the other.

And it was worth it.

That moment was worth all the pain that came before it.


End file.
